The Swiss artist and occultist, Oswald Wirth, has written about the apparently infinite, analogical quality of symbolism in Le symbolisme hermétique:
A symbol can always be studied from an infinite number of points of view; and each thinker has the right to discover in the symbol a new meaning corresponding to the logic of his own conceptions.
As a matter of fact symbols are precisely intended to awaken ideas sleeping in our consciousness. They arouse a thought by means of suggestion and thus cause the truth which lies hidden in the depths of our spirit to reveal itself [my italics]. (1989: 217)
If, of course, there are dimensional similarities between the UFO entities and Ouspensky’s access into a world of ‘mathematical laws’, a world in which our categories are switched inside out, and where objective and subjective are reversed, then we might expect some interesting correspondences between the two. Wirth places emphasis on the unconscious or subconscious significance of symbols in their quality for unveiling hidden dimensions ordinarily obscured from the conscious mind. Indeed, Gary Lachman calls this ‘knowledge of the imagination’. He continues: ‘Imagination has a noetic character; it is the source and medium of our other way of knowing’ (2017: 31). Another abductee, Paul Roberts, uses similar language, however, the importance of light, like with the case of ‘Carlos’, is once again present. Roberts describes these entities as being ‘made of thought and light. They were ideas––but real ideas––and what they brought and still bring is a super-condensed form of truth’ [my italics].
Now none of this reality seems to be ‘contained’ in the unconscious mind, rather that the unconscious mind has access beyond the reducing valve of ordinary consciousness. The post-Jungian James Hillman differentiates himself from Jung’s concept of the unconscious for the same reason, for the unconscious, as Harpur describes, is ‘not located “inside us”, nor is it a “container” of archetypal images. It is not, in other words, a literal “place” at all, but a metaphor, a tool for deepening and interiorizing experience, a representation of the soul’s richness, depth and complexity’ (2003: 120). It is the point of convergence between two worlds and not a discontinuity, a mere islet limited to its own relatively meagre resources––indeed, the unconscious is an open system rather than a closed one. Jung himself expresses a similar idea to an open-system unconscious mind. One might, for our purposes, replace ‘myth’ with ‘metaphor’ or ‘symbol’ in the quote below:
Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man’s metaphysical task––which he cannot accomplish without ‘mythologizing’. Myth is the natural and indispensable intermediate stage between unconscious and conscious cognition. (1995: 343)
The unconscious, Jung continues, has––in contrast to ordinary consciousness’ linear and time-bound knowledge––‘knowledge’ that is ‘without reference to the here and now, not couched in language of the intellect’ (1995: 343). (Again, reminiscent of Ouspensky’s experiment and Lachman’s ‘knowledge of the imagination’.) It is, in essence, Wilson’s recognition of a life force which, through intentionality and relationality, reaches beyond space and time into a vital, effervescent upsurge of peak experience and Faculty X––a sense of other times and places. It is also what Ian Watson meant by ‘UFO wisdom’: ‘an awareness of the universe thinking itself, creating itself, evolving itself.’ Again it is the meeting point of two worlds that grow through each other in a creative, participatory, dialectical involution-evolution.
Maurice Nicoll, another Jungian, in his wonderful book, Living Time and the Integration of the Life, also uses the words ‘two worlds’: ‘The soul stands between the sensible world and the world of Ideas––between two orders of “reality”’ and when an individual has attained synchronous existence along with a causal one he ‘sees clearly––with increasing clearness––because he has become a meeting-point of two worlds, one reached within and through himself, and the other reached without, and through his senses’ (1976: 37). Evolutionary metaphors, here, become bridges into the real.
In one of Wilson’s now little-read books, Strange Powers (1973), he coins a term for this sort of experience––‘bridge period’. It also returns us nicely back to Kripal’s traumatic secret and its transformational, ontological shock which initiates a new stage in an individual’s consciousness. Wilson describes the ‘bridge period’:
During these periods, you sense that something is happening, some basic change, of the sort that occurs at puberty. But then, when the body changes at puberty, you are aware that this is a purely subjective change; it is happening to you, not to the rest of the world. But in other bridge periods, there is a curious feeling that can only be described as ‘involvement’, as if you are involved in some wider, more general change [my italics]. (1973: 112)
Wilson’s ‘bridge period’ appears to be closely related to the experience of what we might call ‘a synchronous life’––when a deep sense of meaningfulness seems to underlie our existence, our actions. Indeed, Wilson himself experienced such a ‘bridge period’ in the form of synchronicities while writing Alien Dawn, for he mentions a curious occurrence in which, while working through the problem of UFOs, he was regularly seeing an arrangement of three-digits consisting of the same numbers on his digital alarm clock: 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, and so on. In his analysis of the phenomenon he expresses a similar sense of a ‘bridging’ between two worlds: causal and synchronous. The latter is a finer world in which, as we have seen, meanings, ideas, symbols and the power of the mind and consciousness are far more fluid, and far less restricted to laws than the physical, material world. Like Jung said, we are somewhere in-between and synchronicity, myth and evolutionary metaphors can only be played out in a symbolic form for our Earthly existence.
Kripal’s traumatic secret and its transformational potentialities can be best tested on Earth. In his autobiography, Dreaming to Some Purpose, Wilson acknowledges that ‘being alive is grimly hard work’, yet, in states of what he calls ‘duo-consciousness’ we are ‘in two places at once’, and this other ‘mind’ is the cause of synchronicities. The ‘bridge-period’, sometimes traumatic and jarring, is nevertheless our first foretaste, perhaps, of a whole new world––alien or otherwise.
Indeed, UFO entities, Wilson concludes in Alien Dawn, seem to have ‘no such problems with solid matter’ and, he continues, ‘we would be the same if we had reached their level of evolution.’ They have, in some sense, bridged the gap between two worlds for themselves, and they may be, in their own enigmatic way, encouraging our own self-determined leap into a higher level of consciousness.
We shall now look at other examples of trauma to transformational states, but this time in examples of worldly shamanic traditions.
Shamanism: Walking Between Worlds
The more one reads and is receptive towards the subtleties found in the literature and witness testimonies regarding the UFO phenomenon, one feels, quite distinctly, that there is a strange merging of two worlds, one overlapping the other. Moreover, they seem to be oddly complementary, one in urgent need of the other’s existence.
Now, of course, there is a rather disquieting element to all this, for there is a persistent theme throughout concerning an inter-species breeding program in which there is, in some cases, biological material such as sperm and eggs extracted from the bodies of abductees. However, it is not entirely clear how precisely this is a real event, for the evidence of physical traces such as phantom pregnancies and so on are remarkably rare considering the relatively wide selection of abductees who have come forward. Indeed, many of the cases that do exhibit physical signs and symptoms may be explained as placebo effect; rather like the many instances of the stigmata phenomenon with religious devotees. Yet UFOs themselves also seem to be able to switch between dimensions, material and non-physical, while popping in and out. Sometimes they’re even detected by radar.
It is now worth considering shamanism w
hich, as its practitioners often claim, directly concerns individuals, initiated shamans, who are able to walk between worlds; and again, the notions of subjective and objective are blurred. There is also the famous ‘shaman’s illness’ which involves all of the familiar elements of both trauma and transformation as described above. Patrick Harpur describes the shaman’s ordeal:
… sudden illnesses, fits or fainting spells; a ‘big dream’; or, above all, an unexpected state of trance or ecstasy. While in this state, the recipient undergoes a visionary experience whose contents invariably include one or more of the following features: a dismemberment of the body by ‘spirits’ (daimons) or by the souls of dead shamans; a purging or scraping down of the body which is then reconstructed with new organs of ‘iron bones’; an ascent to the sky, followed by a dialogue with gods or spirits; a descent to the Underworld, followed by conversation with subterranean spirits and the souls of dead shamans. (2003: 232)
Aside from the physical element of sickness, bodily or psychological with each of its related illnesses, ecstatic trances and so on, all of the later instances of the shamanic ordeal as outlined by Harpur are seemingly undertaken in another world or dimension. Here the shaman––like the abductee––undergoes a rigorous form of spiritual and physical purging. We may here recall ‘Eva’ who said that the purpose of abduction is to adjust the physical body and its nervous system, to expand our access to other levels of consciousness and reality. This too, it becomes apparent, is the purpose of the bodily adjustments as undergone by the shaman, and, moreover, the shamanic testimony and history provides a general universality of agreement across cultures.
In Sky Shamans of Mongolia, for example, Kevin Turner shares a brief interview with a Buryat master shaman called Bair Rinchinov who, at the ceremony of an initiation of other potential shamans who are ascending––both physically and mentally––a sort of Great World Tree, describes his own shanar (initiation): ‘I became very frightened and thought I was dying. I had the feeling that my soul flew out. I saw the whole region, the local area below me, as if I were flying in a very vast plane’ (2016: 146). One is here again reminded of the notion that consciousness can exist outside of the body and the experience, as is often reported, is traumatic and accompanied by a general loss of control. In short one could say that in light of the shamanic tradition the abduction phenomenon also, in its own unique way, represents the Western form of ‘initiatory illness’.
The shamanic tradition, fortunately, has a unique context in which they can deal with these incursions from another reality, and they are able to shift, with more conscious deliberation, from the state of trauma to transformation due, simply, to being able to identify and diagnose the ‘illness’ correctly and early on.
Shamanism has a very complex history, and it would not benefit the purposes of this essay to describe it at great length. However, it is here worth mentioning the components of which they, abductees and shamans, share. Again we can see crossovers which highlight the similarities between the shaman’s dealings with the inter-world and the abductee/UFO phenomenon.
A shaman of the Diné tradition and a part of the Navajo Nation, located in the south-west of the United States and stretching from the north-east of Arizona through to Utah and New Mexico, Walking Thunder––a name given to her by her community––is an authority on the traditional medicines of her people. Although the medicines are herbal in nature, many of her reports cover similar ground as reported in Sky Shamans of Mongolia. Again we see a wide range of correspondences between cultures which are separated by thousands of miles of land and sea. Walking Thunder also produces sand paintings, usually a symbolic image acquired or visualised by the shaman, often in a dream, and is then used as a sort of charm or blessing which heals or encourages the growth of a particular dimension of their patients’ lives.
Originally somewhat sceptical about the shamanic practice in her culture she one day ransacked and broke a number of sacred objects which, for her community and its medicine man alike, were deeply significant and powerfully charged. One object in particular, a doll which she understood as ‘a holy person’, became the figure of her attention, and to test the realities of their deeply-held beliefs she decided to go ahead and break the doll in half. The medicine man, presumably distraught and furious, warned her, ‘… something is going to happen to you.’ Walking Thunder was cynical, basically disbelieving him, and shouted in defiance that she thought no such thing would come of the event. And yet, in a few weeks, she became severely sick, apparently both physically and psychologically. As a result she became a misfit in the community. ‘I was told that I was sick, handicapped, retarded and crazy. Everyone rejected me’ (2008: 19).
Her mother, no doubt upset with her daughter’s increasingly irrational behaviour and resulting social stigma, took her to something called a ‘Talking Back Ceremony’, which is remarkably similar to regression hypnotherapy undergone by many abductees. It demands, she says, that ‘you examine your past and talk back to it’ (19). During the ceremony she was dressed as a ‘bear symbol’ and surrounded by herbs. The medicine man began to whistle until she ‘felt a wound opening on top of my head.’ She continues: ‘I felt him take something out of my head with his mouth. He growled, pulled it out, and spit it into the fire.’ After this she was told she would be able to begin to see into the future. Time, for her, would be experienced in a fundamentally different way.
As a becoming medicine woman her senses, particularly olfactory, became so sensitive she claimed she could both see and ‘smell sickness’, although, at first, this was almost overwhelming and intolerably out of control. To ‘retune’ and heal her mind she was administered the hallucinogenic cactus, peyote, which ‘fixed me up inside and my body hurt from it,’ and after that her ‘vision focused like a TV set and I could see into my past’ [my italics] (35). Adjusting to her new powers she became a recognised shamanic healer among her community and apparently acquired miraculous powers; one of which was an ability to leave her bodily perception and view the position and circumstances of people deemed missing. This ability she called ‘crystal vision’––a typical type of out-of-body state.
Walking Thunder’s testimony has all of the familiar elements as discussed in regards to the abduction experience: illness, trauma, transformation and oddly symbolic ‘objects’ placed in and extracted from her body. And, finally, the radical shift in consciousness which facilitates the emergence of paranormal abilities; a novel adjustment to reality and time, and a controlled sense of leaving her body.
It is interesting to note that Walking Thunder also perceived bright lights in and around people at crucial moments in their lives; particularly prior to a death of some close relative. She mentions that her husband David, also a healer, ‘saw a bright red-orange light outside our window’ (33). She, too, reported seeing a red-orange light at ‘eleven o’clock one night to go out to work. When I started the car, everything went bright red-orange around the area.’ Although, unlike UFO phenomena, this, for both witnesses, is an experience associated with death. And yet, what is the nature of the light itself, and why does it signify death? Is the light, in some sense, a form of disembodied consciousness, a soul perhaps, or indeed is it, in fact, somehow related to the UFO phenomenon?
In Abduction Mack notes that the abductee ‘Jerry’ woke up one November night in 1991 to see, again like David and Walking Thunder, ‘an orange-red light’; this experience, however, is not directly related to death, but instead her mind was, as she described it, ‘turned up full volume’ and flooded with information of a ‘universal’ quality. This was expressed in an unusual flurry of poetry and prose, which according to ‘Jerry’ was most unlike her. These poems and writings that were somehow ‘initiated’ by the orange-red light do, like Walking Thunder, relate to death, although many other topics and themes were also meditated upon. Mack, who viewed these writings, said that they were concerning ‘a vast range of existential matters, including the nature of time, space, and the
universe itself; the great cycles of birth, death and creation; the mysteries of truth, spirit and soul; and the limitations of material science’ (140). One wonders if ‘Jerry’, within Walking Thunder’s tradition, would too become a recognised shaman?
‘Jerry’ called her ‘force’ an archetypal creative principle of the universe; Walking Thunder’s sand paintings were dictated by dreams, and her guiding force, as she refers to it, is simply called the ‘Creator’, for whom the eagle is an archetypal symbol, or ‘life line to the Creator’ (43). The similarities are clear, but what seems to most commonly bind them together is the recognition of a deep, creative force that can be experienced symbolically and metaphorically. There is, it seems, a cosmology of deep intentionality.
In his later book, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, John Mack notes that in the wake of his controversial Abduction he: ‘began to be contacted by medicine men and other native leaders… who were familiar in their own societies with what I had been finding out about the alien abduction phenomenon.’ Shamans from around the world, it turned out, had their own unique experiences and vocabulary for meetings with these entities. Conversely, many Western abductees were turning to the wisdom of the native and shamanic beliefs in the understanding that these ancient practices have the interpretive as well as therapeutic methods for integrating the phenomenon with both its traumatic and spiritual elements.
Evolutionary Metaphors Page 13